By John Waters Jr.
NVP Services
Tuesday, June 19, 2007 6:43 PM PDT

The state Assembly has passed a measure protecting mobile home residents from the growing trend of mobile home park conversion, a measure sponsored by Assemblymember Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa).  Assembly Bill 1542 passed along party lines early last week, and will now move to the state Senate.

“This is a historic victory in the fight to protect affordable housing,” Evan said in a prepared statement. “It gives communities the tools they need when a conversion threatens to drive seniors and working families from their homes.”

As reported recently in The Weekly Calistogan, Evan’s bill closes a loophole in current law allowing mobile home park owners to subdivide and convert their communities into condominiums, essentially skirting local rent controls laws and potentially raking in huge profits in the process, according to Evans.

The bill, should it become law, does not ban conversions, but does allow local governments to protect affordable housing stock.

Recently, the City of Calistoga, in a preemptive move to preserve an affordable housing resource for its senior residents, rezoned the city’s four mobile home communities from a rural zoning into mobile home districts. The move means that should local park owners wish to convert a local park they must first apply for a zoning ordinance change.

Local park owners have said there are no plans for the kinds of conversions that have been threatening — even displacing — mobile home park residents throughout California and other western states.

“Without this bill, people living on fixed incomes will become homeless,” adds Evans. “Ultimately, it’s not just about that. It’s about seniors and working families getting screwed.

“Land values are so high in many communities that ownership (of mobile home plots) is prohibitively expensive, and developers and land speculators are profiting by selling mobile home parks out from under them.”

According to the Assemblymember, there are about 40 mobile home park conversions pending across California, including the cities of Santa Rosa, Rohnert Park, Hayward, Vallejo, Buellton, Carson, Ojai, and San Luis Obispo. Several cities and counties have adopted moratoriums to give the State Legislature time to act on AB 1542.

Currently, law allows a mobile home park to be subdivided into residential ownership, requiring mobile home owners to purchase the small plots of land they currently rent. According to Evans, if one parcel in a mobile home park is sold, the phase-out of rent control begins for the remaining park residents regardless whether they choose to become a landowner or not. After four years spaces in a park can be rented at market rate.

“This means that a space rented for $600 a month today could cost $1,000 to $1,500 in just a few years,” Evans said.